Engagement Rules

Customize how engagement scores are calculated

Engagement Rules

Engagement scoring in Mailnaptic measures how actively your contacts interact with your emails and website. These scores drive important platform features — from segment targeting and send-time optimization to automated re-engagement campaigns and deliverability decisions. Customizing engagement rules ensures the scoring reflects what matters most to your business.

How Engagement Scoring Works

Mailnaptic calculates an engagement score for each contact based on their recent interactions. The score is a weighted sum of actions taken within a configurable lookback window. Higher scores indicate more engaged contacts, while lower scores suggest declining interest.

The default scoring model considers:

• Email opens: Each tracked open adds points to the contact's score.
• Email clicks: Clicking a link in an email contributes more than an open, since it represents deeper engagement.
• Website visits: If site tracking is enabled, page views on your website add to the engagement score.
• Custom events: Tracked events like purchases, form submissions, or app interactions contribute to the score.
• Recency: More recent actions are weighted more heavily than older ones. An open yesterday counts more than an open three months ago.

Customizing Score Weights

Navigate to Organization → Engagement Rules to adjust the weight assigned to each action type:

• Open weight: Default is 1 point. Increase this if opens are a meaningful indicator for your audience, or decrease it if you rely more heavily on click data.
• Click weight: Default is 3 points. Clicks are generally more valuable than opens because they indicate active interest.
• Website visit weight: Default is 2 points. Adjust based on how central your website is to the customer journey.
• Custom event weight: Default is 5 points. These often represent high-intent actions like purchases or trial signups.
• Lookback window: Default is 90 days. Only actions within this window contribute to the score. Shorten it for fast-moving industries where engagement decays quickly, or lengthen it for businesses with longer sales cycles.

Engagement Tiers

Mailnaptic categorizes contacts into engagement tiers based on their scores:

• Highly engaged: Top tier — contacts who regularly open, click, and visit your site.
• Engaged: Moderate activity — contacts who interact periodically.
• Low engagement: Minimal recent activity — contacts at risk of going inactive.
• Inactive: No meaningful interaction within the lookback window.

You can customize the score thresholds for each tier to match your audience behavior. These tiers are available as segment filters, making it easy to target campaigns at specific engagement levels.

Using Engagement Data

Engagement scores power several Mailnaptic features:

• Segments: Create segments based on engagement tier or score thresholds (e.g., "Engagement score greater than 50").
• Automations: Trigger re-engagement flows when contacts drop below a certain engagement level.
• Campaign exclusions: Exclude inactive contacts from sends to protect your sender reputation.
• AI insights: The AI audience insights feature uses engagement distribution as a key input for health scoring.